Mundane Weekend Projects – and Homemade Soft-Serve

After spending Saturday with family, I set off to tackle several small projects on Sunday:

Installing tomato cages – Perhaps this is a bit late, as my tomato plants are now a good 3-4 feet tall and drooping over. It was tough maneuvering them into cages, and in a couple case, I just put the cage between two plants and let them lean. As of this morning, they were all still upright, so hooray.

Fixing the running toilet – My upstairs toilet (perhaps knowing its days are numbered) started running last week, and when the usual jiggling didn’t fix things, I pulled out the book and some tools and tried to fix it. I drained the water, discovered there’s no floating ball thing (is that normal?), and removed nearly a litter box worth of sand. I cleaned everything thoroughly, hoping the sediment was causing the problem. When I turned the water back on… it’s still running. Sigh. I tried troubleshooting everything else to no avail, so I wonder if there’s a split in one of the hoses or something.

Shooing away the groundhog (and raccoons) – I’ve had several problems over time with large furry pests, namely raccoons who leave piles in the yard, skunks who camp out in the driveway, and now, the return of a groundhog. I haven’t seen (or smelled) the skunks in a while, and I hadn’t seen a groundhog in a couple years until last week. My dad gave me some “Get Away” spray that’s supposed to keep them, well, away. I was spraying it around the perimeter when the wind caught the spray and blew it back into my eye. Instant searing burning. After 20 minutes of giving myself an eye wash in the kitchen sink (and effectively washing the floor while I was at it), I called Poison Control and talked to a very nice lady named Babs (really?) who was reassuring and calming. She told me I had done everything right, and to call her back in an hour with an update. After an hour, it was just a bit pink and irritated, but the pain was mostly gone, and by this morning, I feel back to normal. Per Babs’ advice, I’m avoiding my contacts for a couple days.

Homemade, single ingredient “soft serve” – I saw a recipe last week for super-easy frozen goodness, so I tried it yesterday, while trying to take my mind off the searing pain in my eye. It was indeed exceptionally easy, quick, and nice and creamy – almost soft-serve like. Next time I’ll add shredded coconut, or maybe a bit of peanut butter. Yum.

Overall, a very good weekend. Next weekend, I plan to start the terrible task of scraping and painting the 13 remaining old windows. If I do 3 or 4 a weekend, I can be done in a month. Sigh.